The Crown of Individuality. VI: The Hungers of Life

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The Crown of Individuality. BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN.

VI. —The Hungers of Life.

Hunger is the voice of a void. It is Nature demanding her rights. It is the restless, insistent cry of an instinct, clamoring to be satisfied. There are four great hungers of life, — body- hunger, mind-hunger, heart-hunger and soul-hunger. They are all real, all need recognition, all need feeding. The claim of a hungry body has right of way over all other needs. It requires no credentials, no argument, no advocate. It

holds a first mortgage on the sympathy and aid of humanity. But the hunger for food while being most irrepressible, most immedi- ately compelling, has no monopoly on the hungers of life. In the world today there are in reality more people starving for love than for bread. There is more heart-hunger than body-hunger more unsatisfied yearning for sympathy, affection, companionship, kindness and appreciation than for food. These hungers are not a modern invention. They are as old as history. When Adam's They began in the Garden of Eden. bodily hungerwas recognized and great stores of growing food insured him against starvation, the hunger of his heart was appeased by a wife. Then the mind-hunger of the first married couple was appealed to under the pretense that they should know the difference between good and evil. There was a soul-hunger

• From The Crown of Individuality. Copyright, 1909, by Fleming

H. Revell Company.

530 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

still to be met. They had the promise that they would "be as gods." There was no evil in the four hungers, but merely that two of these were appealed to by lying and treachery. The wrong goods were delivered, — that is all. We have all these four hungers because we are human —be- cause we are higher than the animals. These hungers are aspirations, and were meant to be satisfied. They mean man's true expression— not false repression. Life is a continuous battle for our hungers. True living means realizing the real hungers of ourselves and others and seeking to satisfy them. False living means vainly humoring morbid acquired appetites. At Thanksgivingtide and at the Christmas season the cup of gratitude and kindness especially overflows to others. Let us at this time, and at all others, real- ize that feeding the body-hunger is simply an initial duty. It is a

first privilege of human brotherhood, good enough as a beginning but not as a full story.

Let us give others, not merely what we have but what we are. Let us feed their higher hungers, not on set days and occasions, but in unbroken years of such days. Let us make this spirit — like a persistent, pervading perfume of inspiration— ever sweeten our own lives and those of others. Mind-hunger is a craving for intellectual food. It may be an

insatiable desire for education. It may reveal itself in a passion for books, in securing a few shelves of certain books for one's very own. It may mean the joy of possession of not mere books, but of just those selected volumes that mean silent friends, talking over inspirations to one's eyes instead of one's ears. That is what makes a package of old magazines a treasure in some lonely home, after they have outlived their usefulness elsewhere. This mind-hunger may be keen and on edge for fine music, the hearing of which would be a stimulus at the time, and later a golden memory; while to many of the box-holders it is merely a social duty, a bit of pose and something to talk about. The mind- hunger may long to have the privilege of hearing a certain great lecturer, or sometimes there is a rushing wave of desire to speak freely, fully, frankly to some one who seems to live on the intel- lectual heights, and to [feed on his words that if actually given

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personally, in quickening advice or inspiration, would bring real joy. These are but suggestions of the mind's hunger for that which it needs and craves. The great heart-hunger of humanity is — loneliness. Loneli- ness is the heart's realization that no one is self-sufficient, no one is complete alone. It is always the restless yearning in some form, for God's greatest gift to man — love. We seek it ever, consciously or unconsciously, as the great gnarled roots of trees, guided by some divine instinct, ever reach out in their con- stant search for the water that means life to them. The hungers for friends, sympathy, appreciation, confidence, companionship, are simple phases, degrees, or tendencies of hunger for the finest human love — love of one alone for us alone. In a great city there are countless thousands of men and women leading lives of loneliness; they are just heart-hungry for the affection they feel is their due and their right. It is not the

burden of daily toil, the smallness of the reward, the dull round of daily duties that make them heart-weary, but that benumbing sense of loneliness that sometimes sweeps over the soul like a mighty tide and submerges every thought but of — hunger for affection. They just feel hungry for some one to whom they can tell the littleincidents that make up their days, some one to be genuinely interested, some one to share their little joys and sorrows; some one to smooth away the lines of care and worry, some one whose eyes will brighten at their approach, some one to whom they will be necessary, some one who will fill their sky with the sunshine of love and the glow of trust and confidence. They want — some one to live for, some one to work for, some one to need them. It is not always clearly formulated, or even clearly under- stood, for the heart's feeling is often beyond its power to express. It may le only a vague, restless unsatisfiedness, but all the ener- gies and emotions of the heart silently sweep themselves in one direction, as rivers unknowing why, seek the ocean. And, with this heart-hunger satisfied, the magic hand of Time seems to have changed suddenly the whole perspective of life. The harsh out- lines of cares and troubles seem softened and transformed, as the

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moon throws a glorifying silver light of interpretation over even the most -psosaic of scenes. When this heart-hunger is unappeased, we may take cocaines of distraction that dull the pain they do not remove. We do a thousand little things to kill the time that hangs heavy on our hands, but this is not true living. It is the dullness of drugged

emotions that keeps us from our best selves. It does not bring true peace — it is only — numbness. Real peace comes from finding oneself — temporary oblivion from losing oneself. This heart-hunger is so real that it is not limited to those leading lives of real loneliness. It finds itself in homes where there is the semblance of real companionship, but not its actuality, its cold, bare anatomy, not its living, pulsing, vitalizing soul. There is As a divine paradox in feeding the heart-hungry. we seek in appease the heart-hunger of another our own grows less. The food increases in the using, as the miraculous feeding of the four thousand at the sermon in the wilderness — what remained after all were feed was more than the original supply; Let us make others forget their heart-hunger .in the kindness, thoughtfulness, consideration, sympathy, companionship and affection we can give them. Let us forget our own heart- hunger in feeding others, even though we can silence ours in no other way. No one occupies so humble a position that he cannot thus help. There are times in the life of all when, weak and worn with the struggle, the ebb-tide of hope seems to carry out with it all inspiration, all impulse, all incentive. In the darkest night of a great loss, paralyzing pain, or a voiceless grief, we seem to lose our very bearings on life, and weak, trembling hands hold the use- less compass of our purpose. We see nothing to live for, and life does not then seem worth living. At such an hour gentle words of comfort and courage and companionship— words that come glowing from the very soul of another, not empty, cheap commonplaces that roll flippantly from the tongue come as living — food to the hungry heart. When the trials of the individual heart seem hard to bear and the failures of our best efforts tempt us to overthrow the altars of our ideals; and all that we have held high and best seems

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empty delusion,we feel this hunger for a loving friend, a coun- selor, a guide. We want fresh, kindly eyes of those who really care to look at our problems, to help us to regain our faith in humanity, our belief in ourselves, our trust in the certainty of the final triumph of right, love, justice and truth. To feed the heart-hungry we must give the positives of our life, not the negations. We must give our strength, not our weakness; our certainties, not our fears; our radiant finalities of decision, not our unsettled dilemmas. If we were to transform "feed the hungry" from a mere phrase into a vital impulse finding expression in every day of our living, we would bring the spirit of the millennium into the expanding circle of our individual life and influence. We would realize that these hungers are real, and were given to man that they might be satisfied. They are not to be confused with mere morbid appetites, counterfeit hungers — man-made out of the idle hours of his folly. These must be killed— starved into submission, dominated, mastered, vanquished by the individual who would be true to his —kingship over himself. Soul-hunger has its infinite phases as well as heart-hunger. Soul-hunger is man's insatiate desire to know the truth of the life now and the life hereafter. Soul hunger has existed in man since, the beginning of time. All the religions of the world are simply systems to feed this spiritual hunger. Hunger is the conscious- ness of incompleteness. The belief in immortality, another world, a new life, is simply the — last great hunger of the soul.

(The next article in this series, "Throwing Away Our Happiness," will appear in the May number of the Era.)

One of Our Faults.

Too oft contented to be discontented, We let indifference rule us unrepented. Theo E. Curtis.